All posts by pperrin

You have a mobile phone, if it is stolen a replacement means forking out a couple of hundred quid with no notice – ouch!

So you register it and pay £20 – and later, on production of the original purchase receipt showing its unique id number and a crime report showing the phone with that id number reported stolen you get an immediate £200 pay out – how does that sound?

And how much better does it sound if there are no companies/middlemen and no state involvement?

For discussion…

Being fed up with insurance small print and the massive chore of tracking down policies that cover what needs covering, I had an idea.

How about simple shared risk funds?

As described above (say) 30 people pay £20 into a fund (bitcoin account) which pays out as described above – once three people have claimed (maybe in 8 months, maybe 16, maybe 24…) the fund is empty, and everyone needs new insurance (set up another fund with others to share the risk with).

The deposit into the fund would be from a particular account for a particular phone, and payments out would be for the specific phone into the original account – backed up by the original receipt and crime report.

So virtually zero admin, truly shared risk – and shared at cost price (your £20 will cover you for a fair period, whether that turns out be 6 months or several years) – there is no waste or overheads, it cannot be done cheaper…

One extra point – submitting a claim would require a £20 payment to the assessor to judge the claim – they can’t work for free! They would keep this payment and decide if the claim was correct and pay (from the fund) or not and decline to pay.

It may be that claims could be assessed by any quorum of policy holders so involve even fewer people(!).

State healthcare is a disaster – the NHS is an evil empire, the current batch of junior doctors show that it is near the end of the road. This is a very good, positive thing.

Look to the USA… no not their almost monopoly system (which is as bad if not worse than our nasty NHS), and not to their failing Obamacare system but to the free market some have just about managed to start to establish…

By opting out of the overly regulated medical structures (Medicare etc) prices have been put online and led to biding wars bringing prices down to where they should have been all along.

Their online price list is here http://surgerycenterok.com – although I think sometimes it is not available outside the US – maybe US advertising legal issues? Here are some comparisons.

So by stopping waste and getting care down to the best price (which only the free market can do!) the next question is how to pay (note, we do already pay for the NHS, it is not free nor done for love). If we didn’t have the NHS that wastes most of the money it gets we’d already be ahead – but this is one alternative…

I selected this one pretty much at random from google as an example – they are religious organisations – legally religion is the only way of getting out from under the dead hand of state regulation… But they just pay towards each others healthcare bills as needed.

So you pay the best possible price for your health care and ‘self insure’ by sharing your bills with others.

The Freedom Association define the Seven Principles of a Free Society thus:-

Individual Freedom

Personal and Family Responsibility

The Rule of Law

Limited Government

Free Market Economy

National Parliamentary Democracy

Strong National Defences

And while everyone will have their own take on such things – this looks like, at the very least, a useful way point in our journey from here to there. It also has the strength of being backed by an established organisation.

It cannot be that man has to be immoral. It must be that a (self) blameless life can be lived.

An average man needs an acre of reasonable land to live self-sufficiently by his own efforts of about 20 hours a week.

If a man is not to be born a slave to others, it must be expected that even with impoverished parents, when he comes off age he can live by his own efforts without the indulgence of others (even his impoverished parents who have nothing to spare for him).

Clearly he requires an acre of land to set his life account balance to zero – so he may (if he chooses) live his life without having call or being a burden on others, nor they on him.

With technology it is clear that one man farming an acre (or more realistically) an independent family of five farming five acres may not be the most efficient method of farming, it may be that the land could be more productive if farmed on a larger scale.

However, it is for the current owners to decide if they would allow this – and it would be stupid to allow someone else to farm their land unless they receive at least as much produce as had they farmed it themselves, and shelter. The price of a perpetual supply of food cannot be less than the supply of perpetual food. And if land ownership is transferable, the price must reflect that it is for ever, not just the life time of the current occupants.

Each free Englishman should receive a non transferable life time lease on one (notional) acre of English soil. Which, if circumstances permit he may choose, instead, to receive the rent from – assured that this will feed and house him. His land generating his citizens income – no favours asked our received.

Who will give him this acre? The free people of England shall. As pointed out right at the start to deprive someone of this is to enslave them, and to jealously guard the tools of anothers slavery can have no moral foundation. 60,000,000 people, 60,000,000 (notional) acres – one is yours for life, more than that you must rent from others…

(Note the possibility of one acre per person is a fortunate outcome of the size and population of the UK – and while many acres are not farmable, other revenues have not been included, nor the seas and their sticks of fish).

In practice each free englishman receives an equal share of the gross national rent – this would be a citizens income, meaning no centralised benefits would be required.

Existing ‘land owners’ would need to consider whether they will pay the rent for what they currently control or reliquish that control to others who may want to rent it and are prepared to pay more to do so.

It may be that little changes in practice, other than a rational, practical and moral basis for the citizens income being established.

It might be that it could not be entirely anonymous – but a constituent, on any division, giving due notice should be enabled to indicate their vote directly.

For every (say) 60,000 individual votes cast, an additional ‘MPs’ vote maybe created and counted.

Without some thought it is hard to say if the voters MP’s vote should be reduced in weight accordingly – this has merit and drawbacks, but given the arbitrary nature of support for MP’s generally this may not be any issue whatsoever.

On the face of it individual votes may seem unwieldy – but in practice would probably resolve to a number of permanent non-geographic constituencies of like minded (but geographically separated) voters or resolve to MP’s ensuring their constituents were well enough satisfied as to not bother to vote independently – or a combination of the two.

Worst case is the USA situation where representatives pander to stable majorities and energise them by beating up on the minorities – however with direct voting the minorities would not go unrepresented…

While this is a useful (and successful) trait it does have flaws, in that man may tend to see pattern where there is none, or apply a rule beyond its applicable domain.

Applying a pattern beyond its applicable domain is a fault that can be very difficult to correct – as once the subject believes they are correct they will question pretty much every thing else first, leaving their simple belief or faith till the very last. This may take a very long time, or be impossible to complete in a life time.

Some examples jump straight to mind (I must have seen a pattern before I even knew it) religion, the non aggression principal, climate change, socialism and law.

Religion (towards a god) is such is clear example, it may be that all these things could actually be described as religions.

Law is probably the most damaging of my examples as it permeates all our lives, and is backed with huge force that is almost impossible to avoid. The acolyte of law is most easily identified by an unwillingness to accept that any right is above the law.

I consider the ‘right life’ to mean no self-blame can be attached to a man doing all in his power to preserve his own life – even if it means many others die as a result. So a man on death-row could not be blamed for killing all the staff in an attempt to escape.

I consider the right to ‘free speech’ to allow a man to share any thought that occurs to him and that he chooses to share. Literal speech (talking) live or in recordings, and written communications are included in this without reservation.

Where ‘free speech’ becomes ‘freedom of expression’ it is for others to define what they mean by ‘expression’.

And while a man is free to offer his thoughts to be shared, no one is obliged to receive them (but equally should not be prevented from doing so should they so wish).

A legal acolyte will likely take issue with these two situations – while I believes the law (to be complete and consistent) should say rights are beyond its domain, they are not beyond its domain simply because they law says so, the law is reflecting this situation, not defining it.

Law is not a theory of everything, do not make it your god.

The Libertarians non aggression principle (NAP) has become a theory of everything to many, causing great harm by being so.

The principle states that one should not initiate aggression – and by this alone liberty will prevail. However the problem then comes in defining aggression. Once linked to ‘property rights’ (the transferable right to exclusive control of an item) actions against ones property become aggression and so the theory of everything becomes that all libertarian human interaction is property/aggression based – so all negative human interaction must be a result of breaching the NAP, and we get the social justice warrior world where ‘micro aggression’ is seen in everything one does not like (words, deeds, colours, shapes everything is a candidate) and as an aggression is now on a par with physical assault and theft etc…

NAP/Property rights is not a theory of everything, don’t make it your god.

Socialism is an imposition on others of a political and social system that denies individuals the right to determine their own lives – as any totalitarian system cannot tolerate competition it must stop progress and development – and if life is not about new experience then it is nothing.

Socialism not a theory of every thing do not make it your god.

Climate change… If you have read this far I hope I do not have to much expand on this. There cult of climate science – where it has been decided that man is destroying himself, and each must be micro managed throughout their existence. So evidence is gathered and it’s quality assessed how closely it matches the conclusion already decided.

Climate change is not a theory of every thing, don’t make it your god.

One of the highest achievements in showing your devotion to your god is to take what otherwise seems the most perverse, irrational, illogical action but which is apparently justified by your faith alone. Suicidal terrorism leaps to mind, none of these new religions have definitive books of rules, they are all works in progress, there is no limit to what they may lead, or what they may lead their acolytes to do.

It seems man needs faith and if God has been banned, will apply it elsewhere – I suggest God (at least the post Jesus Christian god) was a far, far safer conductor with which to ground this human urge.

Buying precious metals in small, precise units has an overhead compared to the raw metal price, and metals other than gold attract VAT, but that is payment for convenience.

Gold Bars

This represents about £1000 – 25, 1g gold bars.

Supplied in a sheet, they can be broken off individually (still wrapped) so about £40 each.

Silver Bars

1oz about £20 each.

Need less that £20 ? – there is always bitcoin or other electronic crypto-currency.

Worried about forgery? No need to try to bend it with your teeth, there are hand held units for checking now…

Sell them as silver/gold for government currency? What would you want to do that for? Exchanging between crypto-currency and precious metals keeps your money away from the government… as it should be.

But what happens (say) down the pub when you get a round of drinks in?… Well just ran a tab and pay at the end, or go Japanese style izakaya – fixed price for a fixed time, drinks and/or food included. There are solutions to everything.

Why use a gold (or other) backed currency when you can use the raw material directly?